UL's Marlin amid Sun Belt officiating controversy: Every call matters

UL's next opponent, UL Monroe, lost last Saturday by one point after Georgia State's D'Marcus Simonds scored at the buzzer despite an obvious travel. The Sun Belt Conference suspended the game's three-man officiating crew one game for it called an "egregious" error. UL and ULM meet Saturday in Monroe.
Tim Buckley

When UL visits UL Monroe on Saturday, the Ragin’ Cajuns — coming off a road split in Georgia — will face what could be one rather flustered Sun Belt Conference basketball team.

If the Warhawks indeed are frustrated, it’s with good reason — and only partly the result of their own doing.

ULM lost a pair last week, also in Georgia, both by one point and both on a play that came as the clock wound to zero — one of which happened in quite-controversial fashion, thanks to an officiating blunder, something UL coach Bob Marlin addressed when asked Monday.

“Monroe had both games won with less than 6 seconds to go,” Marlin said, “and they give up 3 to Georgia Southern, and then they turned around and give up a travel that results in a basket.”

With no mechanism in place to reverse the outcome of a game, even after such an “egregious” mistake was acknowledged by the conference hours later, Marlin feels it’s imperative that the correct call be made on the floor before it’s too late.

He even suggested a reversal should have occurred at the scorer’s table after a videotape review of the play.

Not that, in this particular case, it should have ever come to that.

“Somebody’s got to see it,” Marlin said.

“You’ve got three guys, and there are six eyes on that play. … Two of the eyes have got to catch that and bring everybody in and stop it.

“They always say, ‘We want to get it right.’ They go to the monitor numerous times and stop the flow of the game,” the Cajuns coach added. “So, the game’s over; go back and get it right.’ ”

Even Simonds himself, incidentally, acknowledged that he traveled.

"And pushed off," he boasted on Twitter.

LAGNIAPPE

UL forward JaKeenan Gant was named both Sun Belt and Louisiana Sports Writers Association Player of the Week on Monday. The senior had a 36-point, 11-rebound double-double in the loss at Georgia State, then scored 22 with 12 boards, a career-high five assists and five blocks in the victory at Georgia Southern. … Gant surpassed 1,000 career points in the win over Georgia Southern. He now has 1,019, including 754 in less than two full seasons at UL and 265 in two seasons at Missouri. … Marlin said he’d “like to hope” that on Saturday the Cajuns get back freshman backup point guard Trajan Wesley, who missed UL’s last two games with a sprained ankle.